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The Quality of Emperorship in 21St Century Japan: Reflections on the Reiwa Accession

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The Quality of Emperorship in 21St Century Japan: Reflections on the Reiwa Accession Volume 18 | Issue 12 | Number 1 | Article ID 5404 | Jun 05, 2020 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus The Quality of Emperorship in 21st Century Japan: Reflections on the Reiwa Accession John Breen the people and being with the people. The emperor’s TV address sent shock waves across 1 Introduction Japan, and prompted a rush of commentary about emperorship, about abdication, and, On 8 August 2016, Emperor Akihito 明仁天皇 indeed, about the precarious future of the (r. 1989-2019) appeared on national TV to imperial line. The ruling LDP spoke up, as did address the Japanese people for only the all the major political parties. There were 2 second time in his twenty seven year reign. His vociferous interventions, too, from the ultra- first appearance was five years before in March conservative Nippon Kaigi日本会議 2011 in response to the devastation of the organization, of which Prime Minister Abe 3 Great East Japan Earthquake. In 2016, it was Shinzō 安倍晋三 is a member.4 The several the very different matter of abdication that experts, whom the prime minister subsequently animated him. In a performance that was all consulted, let their views be known.5 Others, the more riveting for being understated, he not directly consulted, spoke up from across informed the nation - in suitably oblique fashion the political spectrum. Some academics - but - of his desire to abdicate. The problem he surprisingly few – also pitched in. confronted was the law. The Imperial Household Law (Kōshitsu tenpan 皇室典範) has This author was struck by the fact that no provision for abdication; rather in Chapter 3 commentators gave no critical attention to the it provides for a regency in the event an emperor’s rites of accession. After all, a careful emperor can no longer continue. Emperor study of the dynamic, ritual process of Akihito was challenging the law, and seeking emperor-making in its historical context should popular support for his challenge. This was a reveal much about Japanese emperorship: what political move of the sort not permitted him it is, what it has been and what it aspires to be. under the constitution. So, it is little wonder The oversight is perhaps explained by our that Emperor Akihito caused a stir. tendency to assume princes, kings and emperors play only the most passive role in But the emperor here was doing something ritual events. We speak unguardedly of more than challenge the Imperial Household accession rites as if they work on a prince and Law. He was setting forth his understanding of make of him a king or an emperor; or that a the quality of twenty first century emperorship, prince undergoes such rites in order to become as set out in the Constitution of Japan, Chapter king or emperor. There is of course validity to 1, Article 1. This is the Article that identifies this view, but only some. If we look back at the the emperor as “symbol of the State and the Reiwa 令和 accession rites, which extended unity of the people.” Since the Constitution from April 2019 through till December, we can does not define the meaning of “emperor as see that the role of Naruhito, crown prince and symbol,” the emperor had had to come to his emperor, was a dynamic one. own conclusions. As he articulated it in August 2016, it meant nothing so much as praying for What Naruhito did here was construct, display 1 18 | 12 | 1 APJ | JF and render meaningful an array of new and and personal. In the final section, I return to privileged relationships of power. The dynamic the twenty first century to look again at building of power relations is a universal Emperor Akihito’s personal and very public function of ritual performances; Japanese intervention of August 2016. I ask what it, and accessions can be no exception. Three of these the reactions to it, reveal about the quality of clearly mattered above all in 2019: emperorship in the 21st century. i. The first saw the emperor engage with the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Ōmikami 天 1) Ancestors, Politics and People 照大神, with the spirits of the imperial ancestors (kōrei 皇霊), and with other We can reflect on the Reiwa accession rites as assorted kami 神; a drama in five more or less distinct acts. It was ii. The second had the emperor engage with a drama because, before our eyes, a crown the Japanese state, as represented by the prince transformed himself into an emperor. As heads of the three powers (sanken no chō for the five acts, Act 1 was Emperor Akihito’s 三権の長): the prime minister, the chief rite of abdication staged in the Matsu no Ma 松 justice of the supreme court, and the の間State Hall of the Imperial Palace on 30 speakers of the House of Representatives April (Figure 1).6 and the House of Councilors; iii. In the third relationship, the emperor engaged with the Japanese people, “with whom resides sovereign power.” In his August 2016 TV address, Emperor Akihito had stressed the importance of his relationship to the Japanese people, but the quality of Japanese emperorship is to be found in this multiplicity of power relations. In this essay, I first focus on the dynamic role scripted for the emperor in the Reiwa accession drama, the better to bring these critical power relations into relief. I then take an historical perspective, and trace the roots of this Figure 1: Act 1 Emperor Akihito Abdicates emperorship back to the imperial restoration of 150 years ago, to the new accession rites invented by Meiji bureaucrats and refined in 徳 the Taisho period. It is in this Meiji-Taisho Act 2, on 1 May, saw Crown Prince Naruhito transition that the origins of the Reiwa仁 receive the sword and the jewel of the accession are to be found. Accession rites are imperial regalia in the same ritual space, and of key importance in understandingthen re-appear as Emperor Naruhito for the emperorship, but in the end, they are not first time (Figure 2).7 everything. They shape, and are themselves shaped by, other interventions: legal, political 2 18 | 12 | 1 APJ | JF Figure 2: Act 2 Rite of Regalia Transfer Act 3 took place six months later on 22 October Figure 4: Act 4 The Daijōsai in the same Matsu no Ma State Hall, when emperor and empress physically ascended their thrones, presenting themselves for the first The fifth and final act was a cluster of ritual time to the national and international events that ran from the end of November community (Figure 3).8 through into December. The emperor left the imperial palace with the empress, and embarked on an extended pilgrimage of imperial ancestral sites: the Ise Shrines 伊勢神 宮 in Mie Prefecture; and the mausoleums of Emperor Jinmu 神武天皇 in Nara, and of Emperor Meiji and his father in Kyoto, and of Emperors Taisho and Showa in Tokyo (Figure 5). Figure 3: Act 3 Emperor Naruhito’s Enthronement Act 4 was the two-scenedaijōsai 大嘗祭 or great rite of tasting on the night of 14-15 November, when Emperor Naruhito feasted twice with the Sun Goddess on the first fruits of Figure 5: Act 5 Emperor Naruhito at Ise’s the harvest (Figure 4). Inner Shrine 3 18 | 12 | 1 APJ | JF Such anyway was the five-act sequence through which Crown Prince Naruhito transformed himself into Emperor Naruhito. What merits attention are the new, privileged relationships of power that he was constructing here. The first of them connected the emperor with the sacred realm: with the Sun Goddess, the spirits of the imperial ancestors, and the myriad kami of heaven and earth. In the November daijōsai, he came face to face with the Sun Goddess in the Daijō Palace (Daijōkyū 大嘗宮), a cluster of wooden buildings specially erected in the grounds of the Tokyo palace proper. On this Figure 6: Imperial Palace Shrine-complex: occasion, he entered in turn the palace’s two Kyūchū Sanden main halls, the Yukiden 悠紀殿 and the Sukiden 主基殿. In each, he faced Ise where the Sun Goddess is enshrined, and presented to her offerings of rice, millet, and rice wine, red- The new emperor and empress visited the site snapper, horse mackerel, and abalone,on 1 May, 8 May, 22 October and again on 4 chestnuts, and dried persimmons.9 In the December after completing their pilgrimage of company of the Sun Goddess, he then partook ancestral sites. Figure 7 shows Emperor of rice, millet, and rice wine. A fortnight later, Naruhito in the Kashikodokoro on 8 May, relaying to the Sun Goddess his receipt of the he headed to the Ise Shrines with the empress regalia. The emperor moreover dispatched gift- to venerate the Sun Goddess again, before bearing emissaries to the Ise Shrines, to the touring the ancestral mausoleums in Nara, imperial mausoleums and to a selection of Kyoto and Tokyo. But this was by no means the major shrines, to report on the emperor-making extent of it. drama. The emperor marked every stage of the accession sequence with veneration of the Sun Goddess and the imperial ancestors. These acts of veneration took place in a ritual complex within the grounds of the imperial palace, known as the Kyūchū Sanden 宮中三殿 (Figure 6). It is a three-part, segmented sacred space, the center of which is occupied by the Kashikodokoro 賢所, the Sun Goddess’s shrine. It contains a mirror that is a replica of the one in Ise. It is flanked on the far side by a shrine for the imperial ancestors, the Kōreiden 皇霊殿.
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